LESS IS MORE

For those of us driven for success or significance, we’ll do just about anything to achieve it. By nature, this would include sacrificing issues of integrity and morality because getting ahead is the primary value. For those of us who have opened our lives to the nature transforming power of Christ, we tend to leverage everything we can to achieve our desired greatness while trying to maintain our commitment to integrity and morality. (The original disciples are a great example of this. See Matthew 20:20-21.)

The problem is that we go about it in a way that actually robs us of the very thing we’re looking…striving for. Of course, in His answer to James and John’s Mom in Matthew 20:25-28, Jesus makes this clear. He says that greatness, (success and significance), will only be found through serving. But, the place where I see this illustrated so beautifully is in the life of Daniel. Here is a guy who didn’t seek every advantage in order to achieve success in his life. In fact, he did the opposite. He gave up all the things that we would normally see as essential for gaining the upper hand in order to remain absolutely pure before and committed to God. And, the result is, from our human standpoint, unexpected. (Check out Daniel 1:11-20.)

Though he gave up every human advantage for success, he became ten times better than his nearest competitors. How? By realizing that God is enough. He understood what I, and so many of us, fail to remember. God is able to do beyond anything we can “ask or imagine.” (See Ephesians 3:20.) God is the only advantage we need and the only One we should commit ourselves to never failing to seek.

Simply, if we really want to achieve and experience a success and significance worthy of our lives, then we need to always remember that “less is more”…when God is in it. It may sound too simplistic or trite, but it’s the truth. The only question is: are we, like Daniel, willing to stake our lives on it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how this could apply to your present circumstances and life.